Hallowe’en is huge this year

Zynga is really going all out on Hallowe’en this year, I’ve counted and so far there are 17 animals, 16 trees, 21 deocrations, 8 buildings, 13 costumes and two crops, this is a huge amount, especially when you consider that it’s only the 10^th of October and there is going to be much more to come!

But all these pretty items do come at a very high price, I’ve counted and all these items together cost a staggering 1,003 farmcash (and that’s if you buy only one of each)! I’ve excluded mystery game items and level two trees from this! The vast majority of players, even high spenders, aren’t going to be buying everything as the cost is huge! But I must say with this load of cash items there are a few reprieves, there are a number of coins items with the Hallowe’en theme, and they’re not just fences and other small decorations, there’s a number of coined animals. I suspect this 1003 total will increase dramatically by the time Hallowe’en actually occurs but hopefully not too much.

Trees are one of my own personal favourites in the game. So far there are eight level one trees released and they all (unfortunately) cost eight cash, and there’s more to come and I will buy them all. This is going to be a costly theme but I must say, most of the items are awesome looking enough in my books to warrant the high price tag!

I wouldn't be surprised if by the end of the month if the 1003 price tag were to double!

Lighthouse Cove review 2 (trees)

With the release of the Lighthouse Cove Zynga has also released a lot of trees, 22 in fact, which is a bit much in my opinion. If you wish to buy one of every level one tree it will cost you 65 farmcash and 5,000 coins which is quite a lot! Yet I am really happy with a coin tree, something that hasn’t been released in a long time!

One of the things that I’m delighted with is the variety of the colours of the trees, previously the majority of trees released are either green or fake trees (such as the ice-cream tree), which the Lighthouse Cove has come a lot of reds and beiges and all the colours you would associate with autumn so it’s great if you want to decorate your farm like it’s autumn, especially since it’s currently autumn and Zynga will no doubt release many autumn themed items! I would love them to release the trees that are in the background of the Lighthouse Cove, I know that they’re just re-colours of older trees but they’re really pretty and at least they look real!

Breeding and Stuffing Explained

When I say breeding, I’m not talking about the sheep and the pigs. I’m talking about how to breed horses and cows; it’s a pretty simple procedure in which you can make calves/foals for your friends or lots of money for yourself!

Cow Breeding: To do this you’ll need: one dairy barn, the cow you wish to make a calf from and some seeders (seeders can be any cow or bull, they must be fully grown for this to work).

Firstly place your chosen cow and a bull into the dairy barn and wait until it’s ready, then harvest it. If you don’t get a calf then you’ll need to try again. To do this you need to place a ready cow or  bull inside the cow barn by using the move tool. This should make the dairy barn ready for harvesting (If your seeder is a bull you will need to remove the bull you have from inside your dairy barn as Zynga only allows one bull per barn). Repeat this until you have your desired calf. Unfortunately Zynga only allows each farm to have one calf per day so after you get the calf you’ll have to wait until the next day before trying again. There are ten calves available per post for your friends.

Yet breeding for calves isn’t the only thing you can do by this method. If you are level 75 or above you can use this method to make you a lot of money! You need to be level 75 because this requires belted cows which cost 1,000,000 coins and give you 3,000 per harvest. Instead of the “cow and bull” combination you need for breeding replace them with as many belted cows as you can afford. Then using the previous method of placing seeders in your barn harvest the barn numerous times until all are exhausted, if you do not have a lot of money at the start it can be quite slow but after a while it begins to pick up, if you use your earnings to buy more belted cows. By the end you can make an awful lot of money in just one day, for example, say you have a fully expanded barn and it’s filled with 39 belted cows (leaving one space for a seeder) and you have, say, 20 belted cows outside you can make 2,397,000 coins in the one day. Each cow also gives you 10,000 XP which means that you will also level up fast and can make you some farmcash (1 fc per level up, until level 250).

Horse breeding is pretty much the same as cow breeding except you need a stallion, which are much harder to come across than bulls if you don’t spend farmcash. If you don’t and you don’t have 1000 gifts left over from the 2010 “holiday” tree you could as a friend who does, otherwise this can’t be done. Other than that it’s pretty much the same method with the exception that you can get as many foals as you like, unlike the limit of one calf and that instead of needing the horses to be ready they will work at 33%

Just a small piece of advice to anyone who might be on the forums, don’t say “breeding” on the forums in reference to cows or horses as it’s technically not allowed (even though Zynga make lots of money from cow and horses sales from it) instead you have to call it “stuffing” and you aren’t allowed to explain it to someone. So if someone asks how you do it, send them a personal message.

You can also “stuff” orchards to produce seedlings of a specific tree; this is how people make lots of specific level two trees.

Unlike with the barns and stables putting a new tree in will not affect how long until the orchard is ready to harvest, i.e. If you have a ready tree and place it in a 45% ready orchard, the orchard will remain at 45%.  For this to give you lots of seedlings you’ll need plenty of orchards as it will only work once every two days. So build, let’s say 10 orchards and place a tree in each of them and wait two days until they are all ready, then place the trees you want in the orchards and harvest it, if it produces watering cans, carry on until a seedling is produced. At this point my advice would be to grow that tree so that you can use it in the remaining orchards. But don’t forget that whatever you use as the original tree can also be the one that decides the seedling, so the more trees you put into the orchard the less likely an unwanted seedling is produced. 

Farmcash trees – the Never Ending Feature

Prior to tree mastery being introduced there was a grand total of 43 trees, including limited edition ones. Since then the number has skyrocketed to over 250! This shows just how greedy Zynga can get, trying to squeeze all the money they can from those people that feel the need to master every tree that comes out. During ten day Gagaville promotion there were twelve trees released, almost as many as existed when the game first appeared in 2009!  And as soon as the promotion was over two new trees, the Irish and Chinese strawberries, were released.

Zynga also seems to be testing player’s reactions to seven farmcash trees by introducing them periodically, it’s likely that if Zynga makes more money from the seven farmcash trees they will introduce them as a permanent feature, like the price hikes for the cows and horses. If you like to master trees my advice would be to spend less farmcash on the seven farmcash trees as it will mean Zynga will make less money! So say you normally buy five tree, costing you 25 farmcash buy three of the seven farmcash trees, costing you 21 farmcash. This will hopefully send a simple message to Zynga and a permanent price hike will not happen, I know it will mean mastering trees slower but at least you may save real money in the long term!

The one thing I do love about the trees though is that they are rarely re-colours of previous versions (like the horses and cows) but I am disappointed that a lot of the level two trees are simply “giant” or “big” level one trees.

Ability to store trees and animals on Super slow roll-out

I first heard reports of this two days ago and it seems to be rolling out very slowly as I still have not got it. I suspect it may be as slow as the Zynga Messaging Centre which took months from when my first friend got the ZMC until I finally got it (she was one of the first and I was one of the last). I think this is a great thing as it means that people don't have to sell their precious farmcash animals that currently don't have a barn or coop etc. already.

The only problem is most farmcash buyers have already maxed out the storage on their home farm and so this isn't useful until they increase storage capability. A far more sensible maximum would be 1000 as this allows Zynga's most valuable users to store their items, but at least they're moving in the right direction.

Tree Guide

Hey famers, ever needed to know anything about your trees? Do you ever want to find out how many times you need to harvest a tree to master it? Then check out AberZombi&Flesh's guide over at the FarmVille forums

Now for some additional information that I came up with myself. I know some people like to know when they will finish masteries, I like to get an idea as then I know what trees I need to get a hold of. There are some simple sums that you can plug into Microsoft Excel to find this out.

The table in Excel will take up eight (A-H in Excel) columns and will go like this:

A) Tree name
B) Trees in orchard
C) Trees out of orchard
D) Mastery Per day
E) Total mastery
F) Mastery points already got
G) Days to master
H) Mastery date

Columns A, B, C, E and F do not need forumlas whereas the other columns do,

To find out A and B you'll have to count the amount of each type of tree you have on your farm. Remember to separate ones that are inside and outside orchards, unless they are two day trees in which case it doesn't matter. To find out the total harvests required for mastery use the guide I've linked you above, it will also tell you how many harvests are needed for each stage of tree mastery so this can help you work out how many mastery points you've already got for trees with one or two star mastery already achieved.

To work out the mastery per day enter: =B2/2+C2/N. The number N depends on how long a tree takes to become fully grown outside an orchard, if it takes three days then replace N with three and you will have the mastery points earned daily, don't worry if this doesn't turn out to be a whole number, that is quite usual and it doesn't matter at this stage.

To work out "Days to master" you must enter = (E2-F2)/D2 This will give you the amount of days until crop masteries are finished. You'll need to eliminate decimal points, to do so simply click the "decrease decimal" button.

To work out the date you will complete masteries on is a bit more complicated. Firstly enter =G2 + N. This will give you a number, to convert it into a date you have to expand the "number" tab and select "date" then which ever form of date display you wish. The N part is the complicated part as Excel reverts back to 1900, to change this you need to add in the amount of days between 1900 and the date you begin. There are 40593 days between 1900 and 2011, then add the amount of days that have already passed in 2011 and you should have the date that your tree mastery will finish on, as long as you don't add any more trees. But if you do you can always easily edit your chart by changing a few things.

Well I hope this helps people and if you need anything explained, just ask.